general definitions transparency - carter center · general definitions transparency: ... soviet...

General Definitions Transparency: “The degree to which information is available to outsiders that enables them to have informed voice in decisions and/or assess the decisions made by insiders (Florini 5).” Source: Florini, Ann Ed. The Right to Know: Transparency for an Open World. Columbia University Press: New York, 2007. More narrow definition: “Transparency has many elements: open government, with access to official forums, and institutions that respond to the citizen; freedom of information laws; protection of public interest disclosure (whistleblowing); a free press practising investigative journalism; and a lively civil society sector campaigning for openness of all these kinds.” Source: Sturges, Paul “Corruption, Transparency, and ICT’s.” International Journal of Information Ethics. Vol. 2 Nov. 2004. Right to know: “The people’s right to know is grounded in the people, and directed toward the right of people to know about the actions of their own government.” Source: United States International Information Program http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/democracy/dmpaper10.htm Freedom of Information Act (FOIA): Legal provision that permits citizens to request information from the government. “The right to information can only be effectively exercised and implemented on the basis of laws, regulating this right in accordance with international standards.” Source: Freedom of Information Advocates Network http://foiadvocates.net Access to Information (ATI): “Access to information allows for informed participation by people who have a right to be involved in decisions that affect their lives. Access to information increases accountability and is recognized as a core principle of good governance. “ Source: IFI Transparency Resource: Bank Information Center, freedominfo.org in support of Global Transparency Initiative accessed via freedominfo.org “ATI is the foundation that makes transparency in governance possible (Florini 283).” Information Communications Technology (ICT): “ICTs are democratic media with ease of access, comparative ease of use, great data capacity and the immediacy of swift updating.” Source: Sturges, Paul “Corruption, Transparency, and ICT’s.” International Journal of Information Ethics. Vol. 2 Nov. 2004.

We Need Fewer Secrets: Jimmy Carter Washington Post Op-Ed By Jimmy Carter 3 Jul 2006 This article was published in the July 3, 2006, edition of The Washington Post. The U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) turns 40 tomorrow, the day we celebrate our independence. But this anniversary will not be a day of celebration for the right to information in our country. Our government leaders have become increasingly obsessed with secrecy. Obstructionist policies and deficient practices have ensured that many important public documents and official actions remain hidden from our view. The events in our nation today -- war, civil rights violations, spiraling energy costs, campaign finance and lobbyist scandals -- dictate the growing need and citizens' desire for access to public documents. A poll conducted last year found that 70 percent of Americans are either somewhat or very concerned about government secrecy. This is understandable when the U.S. government uses at least 50 designations to restrict unclassified information and created 81 percent more "secrets" in 2005 than in 2000, according to the watchdog coalition OpenTheGovernment.org. Moreover, the response to FOIA requests often does not satisfy the transparency objectives or provisions of the law, which, for example, mandates an answer to information requests within 20 working days. According to the National Security Archives 2003 report, median response times may be as long as 905 working days at the Department of Agriculture and 1,113 working days at the Environmental Protection Agency. The only recourse for unsatisfied requesters is to appeal to the U.S. District Court, which is costly, timely and unavailable to most people. Policies that favor secrecy, implementation that does not satisfy the law, lack of a mandated oversight body and inaccessible enforcement mechanisms have put the United States behind much of the world in the right to information. Increasingly, developed and developing nations are recognizing that a free flow of information is fundamental for democracy. Whether it's government or private companies that provide public services, access to their records increases accountability and allows citizens to participate more fully in public life. It is a critical tool in fighting corruption, and people can use it to improve their own lives in the areas of health care, education, housing and other public services. Perhaps most important, access to information advances citizens' trust in their government, allowing people to understand policy decisions and monitor their implementation. Nearly 70 countries have passed legislation to ensure the right to request and receive public documents, the vast majority in the past decade and many in middle- and low-income nations. While the United States retreats, the international trend toward transparency grows, with laws often more comprehensive and effective than our own. Unlike FOIA, which covers only the executive branch, modern legislation includes all branches of power and some private companies. Moreover, new access laws establish ways to monitor implementation and enforce the right, holding agencies accountable for providing information quickly and fully. What difference do these laws make? In South Africa, a country emerging from authoritarian rule under the apartheid system, the act

covering access to information gives individuals an opportunity to demand public documents and hold government accountable for its actions, an inconceivable notion just a decade ago. Requests have exposed inappropriate land-use practices, outdated HIV-AIDS policies and a scandalous billion-dollar arms deal. In the United Kingdom, the new law forced the government to reveal the factual basis for its decision to go to war in Iraq. In Jamaica, one of the countries where the Carter Center has worked for the past four years to help establish an access-to-information regime, citizens have used their right to request documents concerning the protection of more than 2,500 children in public orphanages. Two years ago there were credible allegations of sexual and physical abuse. In the past year, a coalition of interested groups has made more than 40 information requests to determine whether new government recommendations were implemented to ensure the future safety and well-being of these vulnerable children. Even in such unlikely places as Mali, India and Shanghai, efforts that allow access to information are ensuring greater transparency in decision making and a freer flow of information. In the United States, we must seek amendments to FOIA to be more in line with emerging international standards, such as covering all branches of government; providing an oversight body to monitor compliance; including sanctions for failure to adhere to the law; and establishing an appeal mechanism that is easy to access, speedy and affordable. We cannot take freedom of information for granted. Our democracy depends on it. The writer was the 39th president and is founder of the Carter Center.

The World's Right to Know

Thomas Blanton

Foreign Policy, No. 131. (Jul. - Aug., 2002), pp. 50-58.

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THE WORLD'S

Right to Know

During the last decade, 26 countries have enacted new legislation gzving

their citizens access to government information. Why? Because the concept of freedom of information is evolving from a moral indictment of secreg to a

tool for market regulation, more eficient government, and economic and

technolopal growth. / By Thomas Blanton

istory may well remember the era that spanned the collapse of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the World Trade Center as the

Decade of Openness. Social movements around the world seized on the demise of communism and the decay of dictatorships to demand more open, democratic, responsive governments. And those governments did respond. Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin partially opened the Soviet archives. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton declassified more government secrets than all his predecessors put together. Truth commissions on three continents exposed disappearances and genocide. Prosecutors hounded state terrorists, courts jailed generals, and the Internet subverted censorship and eroded the monopoly of state-run media.

Most striking of all, during that decade, 26 countries-from Japan to Bulgaria, Ireland to South Africa, and Thailand to Great Britain-enacted formal statutes guaranteeing their citizens' right of access to government information. In the first week after the Japanese access law went into effect in 2001, citizens filed more than 4,000 requests. More than half a million Thais utilized the Official Information Act in its first three years. The U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)ranks as the most heavily invoked access law in the world. In

Thomas Blanton is director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

2000, the U.S. federal government received more than 2 million FOIA requests from citizens, corporations, and foreigners (the law is open to "any person"), and it spent about $1 per U.S. citizen ($253 million) to admin- ister the law. Multilateral institutions are also trying to meet freedom-of-information challenges from their member states (as in the European Union (EU), where Sweden, Denmark, and Finland are criticizing the culture of secrecy favored by Germany and France) or from civil society (the World Bank is now fumbling with a half-hearted disclosure policy).

In the aftermath of September 11, as control of information emerged as a crucial weapon in the war against terror, troubling signs emerged that governments might be shutting the door on the Decade of Openness. But worldwide, new security measures and censorship laws have been few and far between. Cana- da contemplated but then backed away from giving its justice minister the power to waive its long-standing access law on an emergency, terrorism-related basis. India passed the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, which threatened jail terms for journalists who didn't cooperate with law enforcement, but no such actions have yet occurred. Great Britain delayed implement- ing its new information access law until 2005 but said the delay had nothing to do with September 11.

Ironically, secrecy has made the most dramatic comeback in the country that purports to be the most democratic. Even before the a1 Qaeda attacks, the Bush administration claimed executive privilege in

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-r The World's Right to Know 1

several high-profilerequests for information, fighting TRANSPARENCY'S SCANDALOUS PAST - - - -off congressionalcalls for the names of private-sector Most of the freedom-of-informationlaws in the world advisors on energy policy and stalling the release of today came about because of competition for politi-Reaganera documentsunder the Presidential Records cal power between parliaments and administrations, Act. But September 11 turned this tendency into a ruling and opposition parties, and present and prior habit, sometimes justifiably (as in details of special regimes. In fact, the first freedom-of-information operationsin Afghanistan)but more often reflexively: law-Sweden's 1766 Freedom of the Press Act-was In recent months, White House officialsgranted for- driven by party politics, as the new majority in par-mer presidents veto power over release of their admin- liament sought to see documents that the previous istrations' records, ordered agencies to use the most government had kept secret.-restrictive and legalistic response possible for FOIA requests, and denounced leaks even as mayors and local law enforcement com-plained about the federal govern-

,-* ment's failure to .a share information.

The Bush '1 administration's secrecy obsession will likely prove G self-defkiting, because like mar- ?kets, governments ,* don't work well in K4 secret. The most ..."" effective opponents of 2 the president's yen for 21

--5.

secret military tribunals were not civil libertari- 7 ans but career govern-ment prosecutors and mili-tary lawyers, who insisted on more open trials and more due process on legal and constitutional grounds, as

-

Likewise, the U.S. FOIA, which has emerged as a model for-reformers worldwide, was

kt the product of ratic enlightenme

mo-but

' rather Democratic par-e tisanship. The legisla-ku tion emerged from 10

years of congres-sional hearings (1955-65) as the r.

6 D e m o c r a t i c

F majority sought access to delib-erations of the R e p u b l i c a n executive branch under former P r e s i d e n t Dwight D. Eisen-hower. The U.S.

FOIA as it exists -with broad cover-

age, narrow exemptions, and pow-erful court review of government decisions

to withhold information-is actually an amended well as version of the 1966 act, revised in 1974 by a Demo--

for reasons of efficiency. The prosecutors know cratic Congress over a veto by then Republican what President Bush does not-that openness President Gerald Ford. fights terrorism by empowering citizens, weeding The U.S. FOIA would not be as far-reaching had out the worst policies, and holding officials it not been for Watergate. Indeed, scandals have accountable (not least the foreign despots who remained a catalystfor freedom-of-information move-are now temporary U.S. allies in the war against terrorism). More broadly, the motivations behind the freedom-of-information movement in coun-tries outside the United States generally remain unchanged by the war on terrorism. Openness advocates are successfully challenging entrenched state and bureaucratic power by arguing that the public's right to know is not just a moral impera-tive; it is also an indispensable tool for thwarting corruption, waste, and poor governance.

ments worldwide. Canada passed its freedom-of-informationstatute in 1982 following scandals over police surveillance and government regulation of industry. Public outcry over conditions in the meat-packing industry and the administrationof a public blood bank prompted Ireland to pass a similar law in 1997.Japan's 1999national access law followed two decades of scandals, from the Lockheed bribery case in the 1970sto the bureaucracy's cover-upof HIVcon-tamination of the blood supply in the early 1990s.

Eat, Drink, Be Corrupt

Some 20 years of press atten- a party of six officials had con- did Japanese citizens line up by t ion and local activism by sumed 30 bottles of beer, 26 the thousands to file informa- Japan's relatively small popu- decanters of sake, and 4 bottles tion requests a t government lation of private attorneys pro- of chilled sake, for what one offices on April 2,2001, when duced more than 400 freedom- commentator called "a rol- the new national law went into of-information ordinances at licking good time"-at tax- effect, but political candidates the local and prefecture levels. payers' expense. As a result of also vied to outdo each other The at torneys, o r "citizen such revelations, between 1995 in pledges of openness. In fact, ombudsmen," achieved partic- and 1997, Japan's 47 prefectures the newly elected governor of ular success using local access cut their food-and-beverage Nagano prefecture moved his regulations to expose national budgets by more than half, sav- office from the third floor to scandals, such as the billions of ing 12 billion yen (about $100 the first, encasing it with win- yen spent by government offi- million at the time). dows and adopting an open- cials on food and beverages Even more important, the door policy-the personifica-while entertaining each other. In information disclosure move- tion of the new politics of one famous 1993 case, city ment helped create a new polit- openness in Japan. records in Sendai revealed that ical culture in Japan. Not only -TB.

Japan's information disclosure movement started 20 Latvia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Bulgaria years ago as local access ordinances unearthed sys- between 1998 and 2000-and even in Bosnia and tematic falsifications of government accounts and Herzegovina in 2001, at the behest of the Organi- exposed widespread corruption within the Japanese zation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. public works and construction industries-a political Thailand's 1997 Official Information Act was bribery system that bulwarked 40 years of one-party the culmination of a political reform process that rule in Japan [see sidebar above]. began in 1992 with mass demonstrations against a

While the eruption of scandals has been a cata- military regime and became even more urgent with lyst for reform in countries with a long democratic Thailand's economic crisis in 1997. One request filed tradition, the collapse of totalitarian regimes helped by a disgruntled mother changed the country's entire drive the freedom-of-information movement else- primary- and secondary-education system [see side- where in the world. In Europe, where administrative bar on page 571. In post-apartheid South Africa, the reform in most former communist countries bogged 1994 constitution under which Nelson Mandela down in the early 1990s (due to frequent changes in came to power included a specific provision that governments and a corrosive debate about banning guarantees citizens' access to state-held information, former Communist Party officials from public and South Africa's implementation law, passed in office), Hungary took the initiative and passed a 2000, is probably the strongest in the world. freedom-of-information act in 1992. The Hungari- an law was, in part, the new regime's revenge against S E T T I N G A N E W S T A N D A R D its communist predecessors, opening their files and making them accountable for previous misdeeds. Today, as a consequence of globalization, the very Reassured by the successful model in Hungary, pres- concept of freedom of information is expanding sured by "open society" nongovernmental organi- from the purely moral stance of an indictment of zations (NGOS) such as those funded by billionaire secrecy to include a more value-neutral meaning-as philanthropist George Soros, and eager to integrate another form of market regulation, of more efficient into the EU and NATO, other former communist administration of government, and as a contributor countries engaged in the freedom-of-information to economic growth and the development of infor- debate in the late 1990s. New freedom-of-informa- mation industries. Hungary's adoption of a freedom- tiom legislation was enacted in Estonia, Lithuania, of-information statute, for example, signaled a rejec-

[ Tho World's Right to Know ]

Open for Business

Scoring and ranking countries by various governance indicators has become big business. The World Bank alone recently tabulated 17 different polls and surveys covering as many as 190 cou11-tries. But the business focus of most of these indexes makes free- dorn-of-information advocates suspicious of them. Most of the surveys emphasize risk for investors (the largest consumers of such assessments) rather than the experience of citizens. Some rating firms even give a positive score for the coercive capacity of government agencies (such as Russia's Federal Security Service) to enforce contracts and uphold the rule of law.

Consider Singapore. Even though the Corruptio~l Percep-

tions Index published by the anticorruption group Trans- parency International (TI) gives Singapore a high score, the Sin- gaporean government routinely restricts basic press freedoms. A key reason for this disconnect is that this ~ndex does not actually measure transparency but rather the perceptions of corruption among business people, academics, and risk analysts. Another irony for openness advocates is that the consulti~lg firm PricewaterhouseCoopers's Opacity Index-which attempts to measure the amount of foreign capital lIlvestmeIlt lost due to poor governance-actually uses Singapore as its benchmark for "least opaque" country.

Fortunately, a group of Southeast Asian journalists, led

by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), has developed a more defensi- ble approach to comparative openness. Last year, the PCIJ compiled a list of 45 key government records (including socioeconomic indicators, elec- tion campaig~l contributions, public officials' financial dis- c losure forms, a n d a u d i t reports on government agencies), asked eight Southeast Asian governments for these records, and tabulated the responses [see below]. (A "yes" response indicates that access was g ran ted . ) Using th is methodology, Singapore loses some of its luster, with fewer "yes" answers than Thailand or the Philippines.

-T. B.

When Journalists Ask Governments vs. When Pollsters Ask Business People

Philippine Center for investigative Journalism Ranking Me.rsurt?~g ope?~fzess 11y tabulating h o u ~ gov-crnmcnts responded to requests for access to offrctal ~focuments

Country Requests Granted ('1 Philippines

Thailand

Cambodia

Singapore

Malaysia

Indonesia 18

Vietnam 18

Myanmar (Burma) 4

Transparency international (TI) Rankings (Corruption Perceptions index 2001) Measurifzg goverf~tnent corruptloll based on the surueyed oplfzions of buslness people, academics, and coufztry analysts (on a zero- to-ten scale u ~ i t h zero as highly c o r r t ~ t and ten as highly cieaii)

Country CPI Score

Singapore 9.2

Malaysia 5.0

Thailand 3.2

Philippines 2.9

Vietnam 2.6

Indonesia 1.9 Note: Neither Camboda nor Myanmar (Burma) was covered because TI found fewer than three relable survey sources for each of these countr~es.

tion of its communist past. But perhaps even more Trade Organization (WTO), is that regulating govern- important, the law combined new access rights to ments and corporations (especially global ones) may government records with strong data protection pro- be done more efficiently by promoting full disclosure visions for business, in an attempt to attract German of their activities, rather than by relying on multiple corporate investment by conforming to European- bureaucracies in multiple countries that provide mul- and particularly German--standards that guard trade tiple opportunities for corruption. Such efforts to pro- secrets and personal information. mote local transparency are more likely to succeed than

Financial transparency measures do not necessar- would any attempt to implement a national freedom- ily help the cause of political reform, but agile advo- of-information statute--especially one that would cates have harnessed the language of transparency to apply to law enforcement or national security or Com- push for political liberalization at the local level. In fact, munist Party deliberations. legal reformers in China, as well as the Communist Membership in a supranational organization, Party's anticorruption activists, are using this argument such as the WTO, does not always encourage trans- to help open the decision-making process in local and parency-as when NATO refuses to release files with- provincial governments. Their argument, which out a consensus among all NATO members or requires acquires greater weight as China enters the World Poland to adopt a new law on state secrets. But

The World's Right to Know

more often than not, First, such statutes supranational organiza- should begin with the pre- tions create a demand for greater access to information, both between and within countries. These b sumption of openness. In other words, the state does not own the information; it global or regional gover- ditionally, of course, "re- nance institutions set up tat, c'est moi," as France's multiple information King Louis XIV declared. flows among national Reversing this legal claim governments, multina- and its legacy in official tional organizations, the secrecy acts (which turn a media, and private citi- blind eye to the public's zens' groups, who use "right to know") remains each party's information the top priority for free- to leverage the others, dom-of - in format ion often with significant movements. domestic impact. For Second, any excep- example, the Slovakian tions to the presumption press reported EU criti- of openness should be as cism of misleading eco- narrow as possible and

I belongs to the citizens. Tra-

nomic statistics under the written in statute, not sub- government of former Prime Minister Vladimir ject to bureaucratic variation and the change of admin- Meciar. This negative publicity led to the revamping istrations. Reformers in Japan point to overbroad of the state statistical office and contributed to both privacy exemptions as a huge obstacle, since they Meciar's political decline and Slovakia's formal adop- allow bureaucrats to withhold any personal identifi- tion of a freedom-of-information law. er whatsoever, whether or not releasing it would

invade the privacy of the person. Consequently,

T H E A B C s O F O P E N N E S S

Making good use of both moral and efficiency claims, the international freedom-of-information movement stands on the verge of changing the definition of democratic governance. The movement is creating a new norm, a new expectation, and a new threshold requirement for any government to be considered a democracy. Yet at the same time, the disclosure movement does not even know it is a movement; its members are constantly reinventing the wheel and searching for relevant models. More- over, entrenched state interests continue to launch vigorous counterattacks in the United States and abroad, citing national security and the need for privacy in the deliberative process as counterweights to freedom-of-information arguments. The ideal openness regime would have governments publishing so much that the formal request for specific information (and the resulting administrative and legal process) would become almost unnecessary. Until that time, openness advocates have reached consensus on the five fundamentals of effective freedom-of-information statutes:

released documents look like Swiss cheese, with every official's name deleted, even the prime minister's.

Third, any exceptibns to release should be based on identifiable harm to specific state interests, although many statutes just recite general categories like "national security" or "foreign rela- tions." Most of this is common sense: It's easy to see the harm from releasing data like the design of chemical warheads, identities of spies who could be killed if exposed, bottom-line positions in upcom- ing treaty negotiations, and the like. But most government secrets are far more subjective and mere- ly time-sensitive. Former U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger has said most of the secrets he saw in his government career could easily be released within 10 years of their creation.

Fourth, even where there is identifiable harm, the harm must outweigh the public interests served by releasing the information. No public interest is served by releasing the design of a nuclear weapon, but the policies that govern the use of nuclear weapons are at the heart of governance and public debate. The Unit- ed States has even released specifics on the recruitment and payment of spies when that information was nec-

essary in a legal prosecution (another form of public President Joseph Estrada. The habits of dissent and interest), such as in the trial of former Panamanian resistance may also hurt the movement, since activists strongman Manuel Noriega. have to learn to work with as well as against gov-

Fifth, a court, an information commissioner, ernments to achieve real openness. Bureaucracies an ombudsman, or other authority that is inde- will always confound citizens unless reformers find pendent of the original bureaucracy holding the ways to change bureaucratic incentives (rewarding information should resolve any dispute over access. and promoting officials who are responsive) and to In New Zealand, the ombudsman can overrule develop some appreciation for administrators' agency withholdings. In Japan, a three- judge panel decides appeals. And in the United States, a federal judge recently ordered release under FOIA Membership in a supranational of energy policy records that Vice Pres- ident Dick Cheney had refused to give organization, such as the WTO, does not to Congress.

In seeking to implement these fun- always encourage transparency. damental principles, the freedom-ofinformation movement may be focusing too much on statutes and legal language. Free media resource constraints and political pressures. and active civil society may be more important than Perhaps the ultimate challenge for the freedom-of- laws: In the Philippines, for example, without a for- information movement will be the need for govern- mal access law, the media and NGOS have opened ments and citizens alike to adapt to a new cultural and government records and even brought down former psychological climate. In colloquial Japanese, for

Head of the Class

In early 1998 , a n elite mation, and could be released. what had happened. She thus school in Thailand picked The school refused to comply, filed a complaint with the State on the wrong mother. and the parents of the other chil- Council (which serves as the Sumalee Limpaovart refused to dren even sued Sumalee and the Constitutional Court) that the believe that her brilliant daugh- appeals tribunal. (One parent school had violated Article 30 ter, Nattanich, had failed the tried to get the attorney gener- of the Thai Constitution, which entrance exam for an elemen- al to prosecute Sumalee for bans discrimination on the tary school a t the state-run "misconduct.") Ultimately, the basis of race, nationality, place Kasetsart University, so she filed Thai Supreme Court upheld the of birth, age, and social or eco- a request at the school for copies decision of the appeals tribu- nomic status. The council not of the test sheets and grades for nal, and the Kasetsart school only agreed with Sumalee, but everyone who took the exam. reluctantly showed Sumalee the also ordered the abolition in

When the school refused, grades and test sheets. The doc- all s tate schools of special Sumalee turned to the new Thai uments revealed that a child admissions criteria based on access law administered by the with the same score as Nat- financial contributions, spon- Office of the Official Informa- tanich-a supposedly failing sorships, and kinship arrange- tion (-:ommission (OIC). At first, score-had been admitted to ments. As a result, test scores the OIC declared that Sumalee the school, but the school are now public, privileged c o ~ ~ l dsee olily her own daugh- refused to explain exactly how admissions are now prohibited, ter's answer sheet. However, an it had picked between the two. and Sumalee's case has dra- appeals tribunal ruled that the Since the other child came matically raised Thais' aware- tests and scores were govern- f rom a p rominen t family, ness of their access rights. ment data, not personal infor- Sumalee had a pretty good Idea - 1 B .

The World's Right to Know==I=' example, the term okami (god) is commonly used to people confronting the government. Or in the words refer to government officials. "You can't complain of the Bulgarian activist Gergana Jouleva, "Democ- against the gods," one Japanese activist told a news- racy is not an easy task neither for the authorities nor paper, summarizing the difficulty felt by ordinary for the citizens." fil

[ W a n t t o K n o w More?]]

Most public discussion on freedom-of-information issues now takes place on the World Wide Web, where a new Soros-funded network called freedominfo.org provides country studies and the most comprehensive survey of access statutes worldwide, compiled by David Banisar, author of "Freedom of Information Around the World" (London: Privacy International, 2002). The site also has links to national and regional campaign sites, including those of the Campaign for Freedom of Information (linited Kingdom), the Access to Information Programme (Bulgaria), and the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (India). The freedominfo.org approach builds on the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism's (PCIJ) pioneering work, The Right to Know: Access to Information in Soutl~eastAsia (Manila: PCIJ and the Southeast Asian Press Alliance, 2001 ),edited by Sheila Coronel.

On the campaign for openness in the European Union, see the Web site of Statewatch, especially the "Essays for an Open Europe." The Bank Information Center Web site includes details on the campaign for openness in the multilateral financial institutions. The London-based nongovernmental organization Article 19-referring to the 19th article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights- features useful freedom-of-information legal analysis and advice on its site, including Toby Mendel's "Thc Public's Right to Know: Principles on Freedom of Information Legislation" (London: Article 19, 1999). Privacy International's site was the first to feature annual reports on new freedom-of-information developments worldwide, and Transparency International's site includes links to a number of international anticorruption campaigns. Freedom House's most recent global study of media censorship, "Annual Survey of Press Freedom" (New York: Freedom House, 2002), reports that the war on terrorism did not seriously impinge on press freedom in 2001.

On the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, see Allan R. Adler's, ed., Litigation Under the Federal Open Government Laws (Washington: American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, 1997) and Herbert N. Foerstel's interview-based history, Freedom of Information and the Right to Know: The Origins and Applications of the Freedom of In fomt ion Act (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999). Norman S. Marsh's, ed., Public Access to Government-Held Information (London: Stevens, 1987) is the only book-length comparative treatment of international freedom-of-information statutes. For a more recent work that focuses on national-security secrecy, see Secrecy and Liberty: National Security, Freedom of Expression and Access to Information (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1999), edited by Sandra Coliver, Paul Hoffman, Joan Fitzpatrick, and Stephen Bowen. For the best study of an individual country's freedom-of-information experience, see Lawrence Repcta's "Local Government Disclosure Systems in Japan" (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 1999).

In "The End of Secrecy?" (FOREIGN POLICY,Summer 1998), Ann Florini argues that globalization compels governments and private corporations to deliberately divulge their secrets and create a de facto system of "regulation by revelation." The first iteration of the A.T. K e a r n e y / F o ~ ~ ~ c ~ POI.ICY Magazine Globalization Index, "Measuring Globalization" (FOREIGNPOLICY, JanuaryIFebruary 2001), found that the most globalized countries tend to be the least corrupt, as measured by Transparency International.

>>For links to relevant Web sites, access to the FP Archive, and a comprehensive index of related FOR-E I G N POI.ICYarticles, go to www.foreignpolicy.com.

http:www.foreignpolicy.com

International Organizations andGovernment Transparency: Linking theInternational and Domestic Realms

ALEXANDRUGRIGORESCU

University of Central Florida

In recent years there has been an increased interest in political science inthe concept of ‘‘transparency.’’ The literature has emphasized the effectsthat government transparency can have, especially on democraticconsolidation. Yet there has been very little research focusing on thecauses of transparency. This study discusses some of the possible factorsaffecting government transparency and offers several aggregate tests oftheir relevance. It emphasizes the mechanisms through which govern-ments adopt institutions supporting transparency in order to signal totheir societies and to external actors that the information they offer isindeed credible. It argues that such signals are more likely to be offeredas the public receives increasing amounts of alternative informationfrom international organizations. The discussion thus links processestaking place at the international level with those in the domestic realm.

The Relevance of Transparency

Political scientists appear to have recently become more aware of the concept of‘‘transparency’’ and its potential explanatory power. Because of the varied interestsin phenomena involving the flow of information, the concept does not appear to bemonopolized by any one area of study. Discussions of transparency can be found instudies of international conflict, international organization, environmental politics,monetary policy, trade, corruption, and democratic theory.

In most studies at the international level, government transparency is seenas a factor that enhances cooperation among states and allows for solutions tocollective action problems (e.g., Florini, 1997; Stein, 1999; Finel and Lord,2000:341). In fact, one of the recent explanations offered for the democratic peacefinding (i.e., democracies do not fight wars against each other) is based on thetransparency of democracies. This is so because negotiations between countriesthat have ‘‘complete information’’ about each other’s intentions and capabilities areless likely to break down and lead to war. In other words, transparency alleviatesthe security dilemma and prevents conflict spirals (Finel and Lord, 1999; Ritter,2000).

Author’s note: I thank Charles Gochman, David Bearce, Mark Halleberg, Jon Hurwitz, Ronald Linden, JonPevehouse, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. The U.S. Institute forPeace generously supported this research through a Peace Scholar dissertation fellowship. An earlier draft of this

article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, inSeptember 2001.

r 2003 International Studies Association.Published by Blackwell Publishing, 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK.

International Studies Quarterly (2003) 47, 643–667

In international trade, the GATT’s Trade Policy Review Mechanism was designedas an ‘‘exercise in transparency’’ that encourages more liberal trade policies(Qureshi, 1990:59). In the environmental realm, transparency is also a useful toolthat encourages signatories of environmental conventions to comply with the rulesof the regime (Mitchell, 1998). This happens, in part, because mechanisms oftransparency, such as the OECD’s Pollutant Release and Transfer Register, shamepolluters to reduce levels of pollution (Florini, 2000).

The globalization of financial markets has brought about discussions of therelevance of transparency in dealing with issues such as international moneylaundering (Tanzi, 1996). More recently, after the Asian financial crisis, the IMF hasemphasized transparency as a common solution to many of the global economicand financial problems (IMF, 1998).

In the domestic realm, government transparency has been discussed as a factorthat affects the degree of corruption, as well as economic performance (Kaufmannand Siegelbaum, 1997; Kopits and Craig, 1998; Manzetti, 1999). A recent study of78 democratizing states over the past 20 years, testing a variety of independentvariables, has found that information access is the individual feature that is mostreliably significant in explaining economic growth (Siegle, 2001:200).

While economic and political transparency has been touted as especiallysignificant for liberalizing economies and for new democracies, recent events insome of the most democratic and liberal systems have suggested that the issue isrelevant for all states. From the refusals of the Bush administration to offerCongress the names of private-sector advisers on energy policy and the stallingof Reagan-era documents under the Presidential Records Act (Blanton, 2002) tothe decision of the British government to postpone for another four yearsthe implementation of the Freedom of Information Law (which had alreadytaken decades to pass) (Frankel, 2001), events have shown that the issue of publicaccess to official information has not been entirely solved even in traditionaldemocracies.

In the domestic realm, perhaps most significant, domestic governmenttransparency has been considered to be an important factor contributing to theaccountability of democratic government and, implicitly, to democratic consolida-tion. Democratic theory has long considered that ‘‘a key characteristic of democracyis the continued responsiveness of the government to the preferences of itscitizens’’(Dahl, 1971). Such responsiveness should exist not simply at times ofelections, but between elections. Governments need to inform the public of theiractions and intentions and offer mechanisms through which officials can bepunished for not being representative. Even the most minimal understandings ofwhat democracy entails include the ability of citizens to ‘‘complain’’ (Mueller, 1992)and assume that one should have access to government information in order toknow about what to complain.

Thus, transparency of governments toward their societies is seen as a necessaryfactor of government accountability and responsiveness and, implicitly, of a trulydemocratic polity (see, e.g., March and Olsen, 1994:162–65). Also, increasedtransparency leads to greater public trust in government and in the democraticsystem and, implicitly, to greater likelihood of survival of new democracies.1 Whilethis study is interested in all aspects of government transparency, it will emphasizethe concept as pertaining to democracy and democratic consolidation.

1 Discussions of this assumption can be found as far back as 1963 when Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verbaargued that the survival of democratic institutions is affected by attitudes such as citizens’ belief in their ability toinfluence political decisions. Different facets of this argument can be found in more recent works (e.g., Sartori, 1991;Rose and Haerpfer, 1995:439; Linz and Stepan, 1997).

International Organizations and Government Transparency644

If transparency is indeed beneficial for democratic governance (as well as forother purposes) how can we have more of it? More specifically, when and how docountries become more transparent?

Surprisingly, there has been little work done to answer this question. Thepolitical science literature has tended to focus on the effects of governmenttransparency; there have been few studies on the causes of transparency. Becausemost authors view transparency as an intrinsic element of democracy, they oftenassume the correlation between the two to be perfect. Indeed, most attempts tomeasure transparency have used measures of democracy as surrogates fortransparency (see, e.g., Broz, 1999; Schultz, 1999). While the two are indeedrelated, the correlation is not perfect. This is true whether one focuses on freedomof the press as a reflection of government transparency (Van Belle, 2000:50) or onfreedom of information (FOI).2 The lack of perfect correlation is especially relevantfor the period of democratic consolidation. During this time, the sequence andspeed with which democratic institutions (including those of transparency) emergemay affect a new democracy’s likelihood for survival.

The few discussions of causes of transparency are generally found in theliterature focusing on corruption and press freedom and point to some domesticfactors such as political structure (e.g., Geddes and Neto, 1992) or economicdeterminants (e.g., Nixon, 1965; Kaufmann and Siegelbaum, 1997; Hellman andKaufmann, 2001).3 While taking such domestic elements into account, I will focusprimarily on an alternative factor affecting government transparency: interactionwith international organizations (IOs).

I argue that one of the principal causes of change in domestic transparency(although not the only one) is currently4 related to the role of internationalorganizations as alternative sources of information. This role has becomeincreasingly relevant as states have become more ‘‘transparent externally’’ (i.e.,they have been offering greater amounts of information to internationalorganizations) and as IOs have themselves become more transparent, offeringmore information directly to the public. Sometimes, the information made publicby IOs differs from that released by governments to their own societies. In order tomaintain public support, governments adopt institutions of domestic transparency(such as laws on access to information) as signals intended to boost the credibility ofthe information they offer to their own public.

The following section discusses the concept of transparency as used in this studyand differentiates between it and other similar concepts that are often usedinterchangeably in the literature. I then focus on the role of IOs in increasingdomestic government transparency and offer a set of hypotheses related to the link

2 Austria, Luxembourg, and Germany (at the federal level)Fall countries considered to be consolidateddemocraciesFhave not adopted FOI laws even now, while the U.K. just adopted one in 2000. In contrast, countrieslike Brazil, Moldova, Slovakia, and Thailand, which are still consolidating their democratic systems, have alreadyadopted such laws (see Florini, 2000; also see European Commission, 2000; Privacy International, 2001).

3 With the exception of the works on press freedom (e.g., Nixon, 1965), these studies tend to discuss the impactof domestic factors on corruption, and not directly on transparency. At the same time, though, this literatureemphasizes that government transparency is a powerful (if not the most powerful) remedy to corruptionFanassumption reflected in the fact that the main international nongovernmental organization fighting corruption isTransparency International. This implies that the domestic factors that allow for a greater degree of corruption alsocreate incentives to hide information that would reveal corrupt practices.

4 The mechanism of ‘‘export of transparency’’ from IOs to new democracies has only recently become relevant.IOs did not have as strong a role of ‘‘alternative sources of information’’ in the 1950s or 1960s as they do todaybecause of the lack of transparency of IOs at that time. I argue that the transparency of second-wave democracies

was not truly affected by such organizations. It is thus relevant that most of the democracies of the second waveadopted institutions of transparency very late. Italy and Japan adopted their freedom of information laws in 1990and 1999, respectively, many decades after they became democracies. Germany has still not adopted such a law atthe federal level. It is thus only with the third wave of democracy and the increased transparency of IOs that we seesuch external impact on domestic transparency.

ALEXANDRUGRIGORESCU 645

between domestic and external flows of information. I go on to discuss theoperationalization of variables and then use the measurements to test thehypotheses across 49 consolidating democracies, over a period of seven years.

I conclude by briefly discussing the relevance of the findings for the design andreform of international organizations. The main argument is that, if increaseddomestic transparency indeed leads to increased likelihood of survival of newdemocracies, less inter-state conflict, greater international cooperation, andimproved economic performance, it is important to understand which IOs mayaffect domestic transparency and how they may do this.

The Concept of Transparency

Although the concept of transparency is increasingly found in the political scienceliterature, its meaning is often left murky.5In part, this is due to the fact that it isused when referring to different aspects related to information flow. For example,in the literature on inter-state conflict, a state is ‘‘transparent’’ if other states canacquire information about societal preferences and support for government actions(e.g., Finel and Lord, 1999; Schultz, 1999). In the international regimes literature,transparency usually refers to the information that governments offer IOs. Instudies of corruption, it can refer to the lack of corrupt practices in a country. Whilethese three understandings of transparency are related, and many countries areindeed transparent in all three understandings, there are also many importantdifferences among such countries with regard to the flows of information.

The literature making use of the concept of transparency is expanding toincorporate an ever-increasing number of issue areas. It has become sufficientlydiverse to warrant distinguishing among different types of information flows andtheir characteristics. I therefore begin by discussing how I will be using the conceptof transparency. The emphasis in the present research is on the domestic flow ofinformation as a factor affecting democratic consolidation, but the conceptualiza-tion of transparency is applicable to other research issues.

First, in the political science literature, the concept of transparency is used todescribe information released by governments to external and domestic actorsalike. The current study will distinguish between external government transpar-ency (referring to information released by a government to internationalorganizations) and domestic government transparency (referring to informationreleased by a government to its society). This distinction is relevant because thereare governments that may be willing to offer large amounts of informationFin-cluding sensitive informationFto IOs,6 but are less inclined to offer suchinformation domestically. Conversely, some of the most democratic and domes-tically transparent political systems are often less inclined to release information toIOs (Mitchell, 1998).

Second, one must distinguish between practices of offering information, on theone hand, and institutions supporting such practices, on the other. This is especiallyimportant if we are discussing developments in consolidating democracies, becausefor many new democracies the two do not necessarily go hand in hand (Kaldor and

5 The increase in interest in the concept of transparency has led to its use in different subfields of political sciencebased on different understandings and definitions. The author has found 12 different definitions of transparency inthe Political Science literature. The main differences derive from the area on which the writings focus: corruption,democracy, security, etc. A broader definition of transparency of actor A toward actor B, which would subsume otherexisting definitions, could be ‘‘the ability of B to receive information from A.’’

6 East and Central European countries have offered enormous amounts of often very sensitive information tothe EU, Council of Europe, and NATO before and after their accession to these organizations. They have done soeven when they were less forthcoming with such information to their societies (Grigorescu, 2002). Also, countriesthat are bailed out by the IMF from financial crises offer much information to the IO, which they do not offer totheir own public (e.g., Bangkok Post Editorial, 1997).


Vejvoda, 1997). In some cases, governments may adopt democratic institutions onlyfor purposes of ‘‘window-dressing’’ to formally please external or domestic actors.Such institutions are often badly designed and ineffectively put in practice.Eventually though, even poorly designed institutions can become relevant asdemocratic forces use them as tools for slowly changing nondemocratic practices.7

In other words, in the short term, the emergence of democratic institutions isimportant because it empowers groups supporting further democratic changesagainst those who want to slow down or even reverse the furthering of democracy(e.g., Huntington, 1991a; Mainwaring, 1992). In the medium and long term, suchinstitutions lead to the strengthening of democratic practices.

This study will join others that focus primarily on domestic institutionssupporting the free flow of information. It will do so because it argues thatgovernment practices of offering information can be deceiving. During a period ofstrong economic performance, a government may not have to hide economicinformation. It may offer much information to the public about policies, theirimplementation, and their results because it has nothing to fear and everything togain. But once economic conditions worsen, governments can choose not todisclose information if the free flow of information has not been institutionalized.The same can be said about other issue areas. Such governments are notconsidered transparent for the purposes of this study even though they mayoperate as such at particular times. In a transparent system, a politician orbureaucrat acts knowing that his or her actions may someday be discovered by thepublic because permanent processes allow for it. It is more likely that such anindividual will act for ‘‘the good of the people’’ (rather than for him- or herself)than one in a non-transparent system. It is this deterrent effect of institutions thatallows governments to truly act as ‘‘agents’’ of the principals (i.e., societies) and thatmakes the free flow of information relevant to democratic processes.

The interest in information flows as related to processes of democraticconsolidation also implies that the study should emphasize the ability of societalactors to acquire information, rather than the government’s offering of information.If ‘‘information is power,’’ and the relationship we are investigating is one in whichgovernments relinquish some of their power to societies as part of the largerprocess of democratic consolidation, we need to emphasize the institutions thatbind governments in releasing information even (or especially) when they wouldprefer not to (Martin and Feldman, 1998:5).

Last, but not least, we should distinguish between two types of institutions thatreduce a government’s domestic control over information. The first refers tolegislation pertaining to the obligation of official institutions to release information tothe public. The second refers to legislation supporting press freedomFi.e.,dissemination of information that has been obtained from the government, as well asfrom other domestic and external actors. For lack of better terms, the two types ofgovernment control over information will be referred to as government‘‘transparency’’ and ‘‘openness,’’ respectively.8

The transparency of governments and the openness of domestic systems are bothessential for the free flow of information, for assuring government accountability,and, implicitly, for the process of democratic consolidation. Legislation on access to

7 In many of the countries where I conducted in-depth studies of the processes of increased transparency(Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Moldova, Romania, and Slovakia), the initial laws on press freedom and access toinformation were initially ineffective. Yet NGOs (sometimes led by former members of parliament who wereinstrumental in the adoption of the laws) began running training programs for those who needed to use the laws.

They also led campaigns to publicize the new laws and the process through which the public could accessgovernment-held information. They even went to court in cases in which governmental institutions did not complywith the provisions of the laws. Overall, they worked to create the precedents for the use of the institutions and,more broadly, to make the institutions more effective.

8 I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this differentiation.


information has little impact on accountability of governments if the informationaccessed by one individual cannot be disseminated throughout society. Conversely,a ‘‘free press’’ with no direct access to government information needs to base itsstories on back channels and anonymous sources. This often leads to mistakes ordistortions in reporting and potentially to citizens’ lack of faith in the press, which,in turn, affects the ability of the media to play an effective role in monitoringgovernment actions and holding government accountable (Freedom House, 2000).

This study will focus primarily on government transparency and will only discussopenness as it relates to the processes that affect such transparency. There are twomain reasons for this choice. First, while the consequences and, to some extent,even the causes of press freedom have been discussed in somewhat greater depth inthe literature (e.g., Nixon, 1965; Van Belle, 1998), access to information has beengiven far less attention. Second, this study emphasizes government reaction tostimuli from the international realm (i.e., alternative information coming fromIOs). By focusing on laws of access to information, one can more easily identify suchreactions in consolidating democracies. This is because there is greater varianceacross such countries with regard to their government transparency and to themoments in which they choose to adopt legislation on access to information thanwith regard to press freedom.

Figure 1 offers a brief representation of information flows from government tosociety and to IOs. It illustrates the difference between domestic and externalgovernment transparency and between domestic government transparency andopenness.9

Hypotheses of the Increases in Domestic Government Transparency

Most of the literature discussing domestic government transparency appears toimply that its growth is an expected consequence of the broader process ofdemocratic consolidation. In other words, as democratic institutions and normsdevelop, there is some form of ‘‘spillover’’ that leads to the adoption of otherinstitutions, including those supporting transparency. Societal actors become morepowerful vis-à-vis the government and eventually are able to break the

3 External Government IO Transparency Transparency

2 4

1 4 Domestic Government Transparency

Government

International Organization

Openness

Openness

4 Society

FIG. 1. ‘‘Transparency’’ and ‘‘Openness’’ of Political Systems

9 The system of information flows among actors is, of course, more complex than this figure might suggest.There are a multitude of international and domestic actors that can also be taken into account and informationbetween actors usually flows in both directions. But, for sake of clarity, the figure only includes the three main actorsdiscussed here and the flows of information that are relevant for this study.


government’s monopoly over information. This is especially true for democraticinstitutions and practices supporting press freedom. This is so because, as the pressbecomes more adept at acquiring sensitive government information, elites realizethat it is more difficult to hide such information from the press and, implicitly, fromthe public. They see diminishing returns from their efforts to block theinstitutionalization of transparency and, therefore, at some point they ‘‘give up,’’allowing the adoption of access to information laws. This logic leads us to a‘‘baseline’’ hypothesis regarding the adoption of laws supporting governmenttransparency.

H0: Legislation supporting government transparency is more likely to be adopted incountries where other domestic institutions, especially those supporting press freedom,have been adopted.

In addition to the role of other domestic institutions, this study will discuss thepossible role that IOs can have in a government’s domestic transparency. Thehypothesized role of IOs in increasing government transparency is not one of thetraditional ones often attributed to IOs: such as ‘‘condition-setters’’ (e.g., Schmitter,1996:29–31) (emphasized by realists) or ‘‘norms exporters’’ (e.g., Finnemore andSikkink, 1998; Checkel, 2000) (on which the constructivist literature generallyfocuses). Such mechanisms are not yet in place. IOs have set down only very weakconditions with regard to transparency for their members or prospective members.When they have requested greater government transparency, they have focused onnarrow issue areas such as the defense budget (in the case of NATO), theenvironmental realm (in the case of the EU or UN Economic Commission forEurope), or some economic data (in the case of the IMF).10 Moreover, themechanism of exporting norms of transparency from IOs to states is a weak one.The main reason for the lack of a direct IO role in increasing governmenttransparency is that some of the traditional democracies (generally seen as thedriving forces behind condition-setting and norm export) have not themselvesadopted institutions and practices of transparency (Grigorescu, 2002).

Yet international organizations allow for an indirect process that leads to greaterdomestic transparency. This process involves IOs as generators and providers ofinformation. Although this emphasis on information flow through IOs and itsrelevance for alleviating problems of ‘‘cheating’’ and encouraging cooperation wasinitially considered as characteristic of the Neoliberal Institutionalist approach (e.g.,Keohane, 1984, 1989:2), it has come to be accepted even by those who disagreewith other tenets of this approach (see, e.g., Grieco, 1988).

The increasingly complex tasks IOs need to accomplish have led them to collectan ever-greater amount of information from member states and prospectivemembers. In order to achieve the objectives for which they created IOs or for whichthey join existing ones, governments sacrifice some sovereignty by surrenderingcontrol over certain information they hold. The literature suggests that the amountof information flowing from governments to IOs has increased over the years(Florini, 1998; Mitchell, 1998; Stein, 1999).

Recently though, another important trend has emerged at the IO level: theincreased transparency of IOs themselves toward societal actors. This has been theresult of their changing role. In the past, it has been argued that the opaqueness ofIOs allowed them to develop and become more powerful, i.e., affect people’s livesto a greater degree (Keohane and Nye, 2002). This success has drawn greaterpublic attention to their roles and has spurred interest in applying democraticprinciples to IOs and not just to states (see, e.g., Dahl, 1999; Woods, 1999). One

10 It has been argued that such demands have led to information disclosure mechanisms dealing with only verynarrow issue areas and that such transparency has not ‘‘spilled over’’ into other realms (Rodan, 2000).


argument has been that, if IOs affect our lives so much, they need to become moreaccountable and transparent directly to societies. The demands for their greateraccountability are reflected in such diverse events as the Maastricht Treaty’s defeatin a Danish referendum in 1992 (as well as its near defeat in other member states)and public demonstrations in Seattle, Washington, DC, Prague, and Nice againstthe WTO, World Bank, IMF, and the EU.

IOs have slowly begun to respond to such demands. The European Union(Deckmyn and Thomson, 1998; Bunyan, 1999), the Council of Europe (Council ofEurope, 2000), the U.N. Security Council (Kenna, 2000), the World Bank (Udall,1998), IMF (IMF, 2002), and regional development banks (Nelson, 2001) have allbegun changing their policies on disclosure of information to the public. Due to thegreater openness of IOs, the media now picks up much information aboutcountries directly from IOs rather than from domestic sources.11 The fact that theforeign press corps in Brussels, where two of the most important and complexorganizations (the EU and NATO) have their headquarters, is the largest in theworld has been interpreted as a reflection of the increased relevance of such IOs forthe public (Davis, 1998).

The practice of using IO information by the press is spurred by the fact that IOsoften hold (and release) comparable information about different countries.Journalists find such information especially appealing because it puts their owngovernment’s achievements and failures in a broader context.

I argue that this role of alternative source of information that internationalorganizations have assumed has increased the pressure on governments to becomemore transparent. They are in a sense caught in a ‘‘two-level information game.’’The more information they offer to IOs, the more information about governmentaction and intentions is likely to be passed on to societal actors. This poses thedilemma sketched in Figure 2. The opening of a previously insignificant channel ofcommunication between IOs and societies has intimately linked domestic (arrow 1in Figure 2) and external (arrow 2 in Figure 2) flows of information fromgovernments. Governments need to decide how transparent they will or need bedomestically given their external transparency and, conversely, how externallytransparent they should be, given the domestic implications.

I hypothesize that the growing flow of information from IOs increases thelikelihood that governments will allow for (or even push for) the adoption oflegislation supporting transparency. This can happen in two ways. On the onehand, political elites may allow for the passage of laws increasing transparency in aparticular year because they recognize that they do not have a monopoly overinformation anymore and that their societies can now receive information directlyfrom international organizations. There may thus be a threshold for each country atwhich a majority of political elites recognize that it is not worth maintainingopaqueness because their societies ‘‘find out anyway.’’12 I therefore hypothesizethat

H1: Countries with greater levels of information flows from IOs to societal actors are morelikely to adopt laws supporting domestic government transparency than those with lowlevels of flows.

11 The press also uses other external sources of information. Thus, international NGOs and the foreign mediaare often cited by the domestic press. While the amount of information reaching societal actors and originating fromNGOs and the foreign media depends solely on the openness of the political system, the information arriving from

IOs is of particular interest because it also is a function of the relationship between the government and the IOs ofwhich it is or aspires to be a member. It is for this reason that I focus on flows of information from IOs.

12 The presence of this logic was confirmed by some of the members of parliament, government officials, andNGO representatives I interviewed in 2000 and 2001 in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Moldova, Romania, and Slovakia.These countries have adopted legislation on access to information in the past two to three years.


A second mechanism, conducive to the adoption of institutions supportingtransparency, emphasizes the sudden increase in the amount of information flowingfrom IOs to societal actors rather than its level. If the process through which moreinformation is made available to the public is gradual, elites may slowly becomeaccustomed and adapt to the ‘‘new realities’’ of losing control over information andmight not perceive the need to change legislation pertaining to information flow. Itmay in fact be certain ‘‘shocks’’ (i.e., rapid increase in the flow of information fromIOs) that draw the attention of political elites and change their cost-benefitcalculations. Elites in new democracies, with relatively brief reputations fortruthfulness, might, for example, want to adopt instruments of transparency tosignal both domestic and external actors that they do not fear the release ofinformation because ‘‘they always tell the truth.’’ I argue that many of the recentlaws on access to information were adopted for such signaling purposes. Severalexamples offer useful illustrations of this process.

In Romania, a cyanide spill near the town of Baia Mare in January 2000 led to asevere environmental crisis. As the spill affected neighboring Hungary andYugoslavia, the incident picked up international dimensions and an inter-IO teamwas dispatched to study the event. The EU-led task force for the appraisal of theaccident offered a less than flattering report on the Romanian official response tothis event (Baia Mare Task Force, 2000). More important though, it quicklylaunched a program for ‘‘Public Information and Participation’’ through which itmade the information on the ecological disaster directly available to RomanianNGOs and the general public (Savulescu, 2000). As some of the informationreleased by the task force differed from the little information released by the localand national authorities, the Romanian government realized that it had a credibilityproblem and decided to signal that its information will be credible and verifiable, atleast in the future. It did so domestically by quickly adopting legislation on access toinformation in the environmental realm. It also sent a signal to external actors byratifying the Aarhus Convention (dealing with public participation and access toinformation in the environmental realm) in July 2000 (UNECE, 2001). Moreover, afew months later (and just before the general elections), authorities quickly puttogether a working group made up of members of parliament, governmentofficials, and NGO representatives in order to discuss the adoption of a broader lawon access to information.

In Thailand, at the beginning of the financial crisis of 1997, the governmentcontinued its long-held practices of ‘‘opaqueness’’ toward the public. Its lack ofcredibility, especially after the seriousness of the crisis became apparent, led onejournalist to welcome IMF intervention, not so much because the IO could solve thefinancial woes of Thailand, but rather because it would finally offer the Thai public

Society

Government

International Organization

FIG. 2. Flows of Information from Government to Society


relevant information on the extent of the crisis and on the government’s actions.13

By July 1997, the lack of credibility of official government information led to theadoption of a freedom of information law in Thailand. This law was not the directresult of IMF demands for transparency (which focused only on the economicrealm). Rather the law can be interpreted as a ‘‘signal’’ by the Thai government thatfuture information it offered would be ‘‘verifiable’’ and at least as credible asalternative information emerging from IOs.

In the late 1990s there were multiple reports of South Africa’s powerful arms’industry selling weapons to countries under UN embargo. The press appeared tobe more skeptical about initial accusations when they were based on informationcoming from foreign press sources or from international NGOs. In such cases, theSouth African government simply denied any of its own wrongdoings and did notappear to take actions to boost its own credibility because it probably did notperceive it had truly lost any. It was only after several UN Security Council reportsin the 1997–1999 period showed that South African companies had sold arms toAngola and that official restraints on these actions had not been adequate14 that thegovernment began sending signals intended to boost its credibility bothdomestically and internationally. For example, in November 1998, South Africaintroduced a resolution in the UN General Assembly on the improvement ofcoordination of international effort against illicit trafficking of small arms (Selebi,1998), thus signaling its support for transparency in arms sales. In October 1999, itboasted that it was the first country to post details on its arms sales on itsDepartment of Defense website (Streek, 1999). By the summer of 2000 (soon afteran additional UNSC report mentioned, once more, South African arms sales toAngola), South Africa adopted a comprehensive freedom of information law.

It is not suggested here that the FOI law in South Africa was the direct result of acrisis of trust generated by the aforementioned UNSC information. In fact, theinformation did not even appear to reach the level of a full-blown scandal. Butsudden increases in alternative (and condemning) information offered by IOsadded to existing problems of the government’s credibility (Paton, 1999) and to theperceptions that it needed to regain public trust.

The preceding examples show that governments often feel the need to prove totheir societies, as well as to external actors, that the information they provide iscredible. In order to boost the credibility of the information, they may decide toadopt ‘‘signals of transparency.’’ These signals are more convincing if they involvethe adoption of institutions and not simply the ad-hoc offering of information. Thelatter is not as effective in signaling commitment to transparency and does not offergovernments the necessary credibility they are seeking.

Crises of trust can certainly emerge without the existence of alternativeinformation received from IOs. Many scandals that spurred the adoption of lawson access to information were based on domestic sources of information. The U.S.example, where the Freedom of Information legislation appeared during theVietnam War, and was then strengthened after the Watergate scandal, is relevant inthis respect. This study suggests, though, that the increased flows of informationfrom IOs to society are an additional potential cause of crises of trust, and,

13 The editorial argued: ‘‘If in the course of their mission in Thailand, the executives of the InternationalMonetary Fund establish what is going on here, we would appreciate if they spread the word. y The increasingfrequency with which organizations and institutions of foreign origin are showing that they have an idea about whatis happening in Thailand indicates that political leaders are being less than free with the flow of information on the

domestic front’’ (Bangkok Post Editorial, 1997:8).14 While the reports indeed blamed individual businessmen for the infringements of the embargo, they also

criticized the lax South African government controls at airports and ‘‘selective applications on travel bans for Unitaofficials’’ (see, e.g., SAPA Editorial, 2000) and expressed UNSC expectations to clamp down on illegal arms sales.(See, e.g., Fabricius, 1997.)


therefore, there is an increased likelihood that laws on access to information arepassed in order to regain public trust.

The mechanism, described above, implies that the increase in the flow ofinformation from IOs to societies (arrow 2 in Figure 2) explains the adoption ofinstitutions supporting domestic government transparency. Thus the thirdhypothesis to be tested is

H2: Countries with greater increases in information flows from IOs to societal actors aremore likely to adopt legislation supporting domestic government transparency thanother countries.

The Dependent Variable: Domestic Government Transparency

The lack of a common understanding of the concept of transparency (as well as theproblems involved in measuring information flows) has led to problems in itsoperationalization. Indeed, there have been very few actual attempts to measuretransparency. A study by Finel and Lord (1999) testing the impact of ‘‘statetransparency’’ on inter-state conflict (defined as the ability of state B to determinethe intentions of state A) offers one of the few such measures.15 Another measure oftransparency that has been made available through the impressive efforts of theNGO ‘‘Transparency International’’ is, in fact, a measure of corruption.16 The twomeasures are intended to help assess the likelihood of inter-state conflict andcorruption, respectively. But they do not adequately reflect information flows interms of democratic consolidationFthe main concern of this study.

As mentioned earlier, the emphasis here on transparency as a factor affectingdemocratic consolidation determines its measurement. Domestic governmenttransparency has been defined as the existence of institutions that allow any citizento gain access to information held by government. It is therefore operationalizedusing an ordinal measure that can take three possible values reflecting the status ofaccess to information legislation in a country, at a certain moment in time. Domesticgovernment transparency was coded ‘‘0’’ when there was no specific law allowingfor access to government information. Countries in which comprehensive laws onaccess to information were in place were coded ‘‘2.’’ In order to score a ‘‘2,’’ the lawson access to information needed to meet five specific conditions:

1. laws make clear that access to information is the norm and exemptions are tobe resorted to only in exceptional cases.

2. laws protect the right to access information held by local and nationalgovernment institutions.

3. laws include a precise definition of the exemptions to the right of access.4. laws include provisions for an independent review of denials of access to

information.5. laws provide for minimal (or no) fees for the requested information.

15 The measure used by Finel and Lord is useful for the purposes of that study, for which domestic transparency

was relevant as long as it reflected the ability of external actors to access information about internal debates.According to this measure, a state is considered transparent if it met at least two of six conditions in three categories:debate, control, and disclosure. For the purpose of the present study, the operationalization employed by Finel andLord is not very helpful because it does not allow one to differentiate among new democracies that have very similarlevels of government transparency according to this measurement.

16 This measure is one solely of ‘‘practices’’ and not of institutions. It is based on surveys that reflect the

perceptions of businesspeople, academics, and country analysts. Countries like Singapore, with very low democracyscores, are considered to be very ‘‘transparent’’ (or, at least, to have little corruption) according to this measure.Moreover, one can argue that the measure of corruption that is offered by TI is largely a reflection of transparencyin the economic realm and not in others (e.g., in the environmental or political one) (Transparency International,2001).


The five conditions were identified in legal scholarship as the main elements thatare considered relevant to laws on public access to information (Martin andFeldman, 1998; Mendel, 1999; Mock, 2000). If at least one of these conditions wasnot met (but the country nevertheless had a law on access to information), the casewas coded ‘‘1.’’ This intermediate score was considered necessary because it reflectsa common stage through which many new democracies pass before reaching a fullyfunctional system of access to information. For example, in Argentina or India lawson access to information emerged initially at the local level while, in other countries,they first applied only to national institutions and only afterwards to localinstitutions (Article 19, 2001). In Brazil, it took several years to make an existingfreedom of information law fully functional by adding a precise list of exceptions tothe law. In the Czech Republic, it also took several years for the cost of informationretrieval to be fully regulated. Before that, the exorbitant fees requested by officialinstitutions when offering information made the law difficult to use by the generalpublic.

In all of these ‘‘intermediate’’ cases, one can argue that, although the systemswere not as transparent as those coded ‘‘2,’’ they were more transparent than thosecoded ‘‘0.’’ More important, the intermediate systems can be viewed as a steptoward greater transparency because they have at least a partial effect on the flow ofdomestic information. Thus, even though government officials feel they can getaway with refusing to offer information to the public by using the loopholes left bythe legislation, they realize that, in the not-so-distant future, the laws supportingtransparency may be refined and their present acts may be under greater publicscrutiny. The deterrent effect of transparency may thus still have an impact on theirbehavior. For this reason, the operationalization of transparency across threepossible values was preferred to a simpler dichotomous operationalization.

The Independent Variable: Information Flow from IOs to the Public

The main argument of this study is that the external flow of information (i.e., fromgovernments to international organizations and then from IOs to societyFarrow 2in Figure 2) affects government incentives to adopt institutions of domestictransparency. This flow of information is a function of the information that IOshold (collected directly from member statesFi.e., external transparencyFbut alsofrom NGOs and other sources) and the rules and regulations governing publicaccess to information (i.e., IO transparency). Moreover, the information actuallyreceived by societal actors depends on the ability of the press to disseminateinformation to the domestic public (i.e., on the openness of the domestic system).The main independent variable of this study needs therefore to reflect the amountof IO-released information that the press can use to criticize the government.

An initial operationalization of the flow of information from IOs to society wasdeveloped by measuring the proportion of news (published in a country) that usesinformation originating from an international organization and that is critical of thegovernment. This measure taps into the main effect that is being hypothesized tolead to greater domestic transparency: As international organizations release moreinformation directly to societal actors, the domestic press often uses the incominginformation as a basis for its criticism of the government. It is due to such criticismthat governmental elites might decide that they need to send signals of increasedtransparency to regain their lost credibility.

Unfortunately, existing sources did not allow for the collection of comparablecross-national data for all countries of interest and for a longer period of time.Instead, I structured a set of ‘‘plausibility probes’’ examining all four regions of theworld where the ‘‘third wave of democratization’’ has spread: Africa, Asia, EastEurope, and Latin America. At least two countries were chosen from each area: onein which domestic transparency had increased substantially in the past five years


and one in which domestic transparency had remained about the same. Thecountries selected were: Namibia and South Africa, Philippines and Thailand,Bolivia and Brazil, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Moldova, Poland, Romania, andSlovakia.17 It is noteworthy that almost all of these countries had similar‘‘democracy scores’’ in the Polity and Freedom House dataset. Thus, the differencesin their domestic transparency are not fully explainable by differences in theirgeneral domestic structures as reflected in the two datasets. To count the number ofnews articles that use IOs as the source of their critiques of government across allcountries in the study, I used the World News Connection.18

In all countries in the study, at some point during the five years under scrutiny,information received from IOs led to heated domestic debates. The ‘‘plausibilityprobe’’ was helpful in identifying some of the most important press stories that mayhave affected the debates and the calculations of elites involved in the adoption ornonadoption of institutions supporting transparency. These issues were laterpursued in interviews in some of these countries to assess in detail their relevance tothe mechanisms that may have led to greater transparency.

More important for the purposes of measuring the information flow from IOs tosociety was the discovery that not all IOs were equally relevant for the domesticpress. Although the initial analysis took into account more than 50 internationalorganizations, the data showed that, in fact, only 17 were reported as the source ofalmost all negative information about governments. The 17 that were consideredrelevant each provided information that generated at least .5% of the total‘‘negative’’ articles for all 12 countries or at least 1% of total ‘‘negative’’ articles fromone region (i.e., continent). Together, these international organizations served asthe source for 98.3% of the total number of negative news stories based oninformation coming from IOs for the 12 countries across all years. Among the bestknown international organizations that offered very little (or no) information usedby the press to critique governments were the International Atomic Energy Agency,Interpol, the World Trade Organization, APEC, Mercosur, and the Organization ofAfrican Unity.

Using the number of international organizations that ‘‘matter,’’ a second measureof information flow from international organizations was constructed. This measurewas based on the total number of news releases and communiqués issued about acountry by the 17 IOs. The list of organizations considered for this measure isoffered in Appendix I.

These organizations offer press releases in different formats. Some organizationsoffer complex studies of a country, some release much of their information throughspee

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